Parasensory
by lisander
Summary: Lisbeth hasn't seen Michael in weeks.


The night is still with frigid air. Lisbeth waits, alone, across the street from the tall grey office building. She is impatient as she watches the bustling traffic entering and exiting the building.  
Usually she would bring along her Kawasaki Ninja motorbike, but tonight she stands slightly obscured in the shadows behind a burgundy Honda. It doesn't exactly belong to her; it is a loner from her place of work, Milton Security. She borrows it from time to time, according to her need. She is here on business.  
Conducting a stakeout is a fairly simple task; it consists of isolating a target and analyzing his or her baseline of actions, visiting his or her home or office, identifying their bahavioral patterns and making acute judgments about their lives. Her employment makes nights like this relatively common. It isn't unusual for her to make these stops around Stockholm and the surrounding countryside; quite the contrary, she is a private investigator who is keen on her work. She is known by her boss, Drangan Armansky, to churn out hundred page documents on various subjects assigned to her. Like this one—Jeremy Pivon, a forty-nine year old investment realtor who is being investigated for embezzlement by his company, Sundstrom Homes Inc. According to Salander's notes, he has been working with a partner, Tabitha Eklund, who is a secretary for the company. The evidence against them is mostly botched and missing records. The company wants to know exactly how much money is missing, and what the funds are being used for.  
Salander is here on this particular night to observe Jeremy Pivon in action. Tonight he is expected to show at the office after hours, in all likelihood to review some of the mishandled documents that he has produced for the company to evaluate. She is here to take pictures of Jeremy, as he both enters and exits the building. Then she will take careful note of the time, and painstakingly mark it in her notes. This part is to serve as proof of Pivon's suspicious behavior. Salander is keenly aware of the fact that neither of the other two PI's at Milton would dare go to such lengths, being fat old men as they are, to profile a subject, but there it is. And it pays the bills. She has been doing this for about four years.  
She glances at her mobile for the time. 11:15 pm. Jeremy will be leaving the building any moment now. Salander reaches for her Nikon D5200 digital camera and repositions herself by the car. She clutches the camera in her hands, and, slowly, she raises it to her right eye. Jeremy Pivon, in slacks, a coat, and a tie exits the building. She takes one, two, three shots, and then more, as he walks into the street to await his car. She has previously obtained the travel itinerary that his limousine company uses. She will include that. She takes a total of thirty shots of him entering the car. She watches as it pulls off into the night.  
Lisbeth lowers the camera, holding it gingerly in her grasp. She depresses the button to rifle deftly through the shots, decides they wil be sufficient, and packs away the camera in its case. She files briefly through the papers in her folder, picking out bits of information with sharp eyes before stashing those away too. The details are clear to her. Jeremy has been stealing from the company in small incriments for several years. Only recently has the extortion grown into anything noticeable. But in order to conclude the report, Lisbeth will have to investigate how Jeremy Pivon and his accomplice are spending the money.  
She packs away the rest of her things, then drives to Milton. As she drives, the driver side window is slightly ajar, and bitter wind whips about her face. The heat is blaring. Her phone is connected to the stereo, and some low and pulsing electronica plays from the car speakers. She feels acutely coherent, clearheaded, alone, as she drives, with the lights of the street playing across her fingers and the car das  
When she arrives at Milton, she parks the car carefully, then strides down the metal stairs of the parking garage to the ground floor, then through a walkway that leads to a sheltered arcade that winds around to the entrance a few meters away. The hour is about twelve. At the entrance she flashes her ID, which features a photo of her taken three years ago, when her hair was still short and roguish. She walks past the security cameras to the elevators and pushes the button, and waits for a while. Then, when the elevator arrives, she offhandedly punches in the keycode to the floor that she is headed for. When it arrives, the office is cold and dark, void of any signs of life. She quietly and efficiently treads to a corner office to make a CD of the pictures, drop off some files, and update her roster of notes. This is admittedly an odd time to make her office rounds, but it saves her the trip in the morning and while Salander is not exactly lazy, she considers herself habitually efficient. She plugs in the camera to the computer, extracts a blank CD from a filing cabinet in the corner, and serenely begins the upload.  
By the time she is finished, she can see the guards changing shift on the ground down below. She decides that she has taken long enough, and nimbly collects her items from the office desk before stowing them in her bulky shoulder bag. Then, swinging the bag over her shoulder, she makes her exit from Milton and heads back to the parking lot. Her Kawasaki is parked at the corner near the elevator on a different landing. She huddles into the layers of her jacket. The ride home will be freezing. She fishes out some riding gloves from the interior of her bag. She then mounts the bike and starts the motor. She pulls out of the garage onto the empty streets, distantly observing the cars on the road.  
The trip back home is eventless and dull. She pulls into the carport of her humble apartment complex and reaches for her keys. Then, killing the motor, she dismounts and locks up the bike. She hikes up the stairs leading to her flat, and, after fidgeting with the keys for some time, opens the door.  
Her apartment is askew with papers and other garbage. Boxes line the hallways and are stacked against the walls, filled with her mother's things, memoribillia of a different time. Garbage bags full of newspapers and various periodicals of different types are also to be found laying about. The furniture is modest and unassuming; there is a living room with a sofa and a chair, a dining area with a few mismatched chairs, a small kitchenette, two bedrooms and a bathroom, with some closets to fill out the rest of the flat's layout. She drops the bag on the floor. She heads to one of the bedrooms to change out of her leathers and into something more suitable. In the bedroom, she peels off the outermost leather jacket and sets it on the bed. Then she removes a scarf, a hooded jacket, a sweater, and two thermal shirts. She selects a basic t-shirt from the closet and pulls it over her head. She moves over to a set of drawers with a mid-length mirror vanity and glances at the reflection in the mirror.  
There stands a girl of about 25, with a punk haircut dyed a permanent shade of black. Dark black kohl lines her eyes. She sports several piercings on her face and ears, and shaved eyebrows. She is wearing wrinkled black jeans and a thin t-shirt, with no bra covering her small breasts. No other makeup stains her skin. She checks herself for a second, turning over her hair in her hands. She thinks she looks decent, in a somewhat bazarre way, before turning off the light and walking toward the dining room  
Attentively she arranges her things on the table, including a Macbook, her DSLR, some pens, and other miscellaneous computer equipment like USB drives and some cords. She also lays out some files she has taken from the office. She spreads the paperwork in organized piles around her, decentralized from her Macbook. With a highlighter she makes some more incrimentally detailed notes, like the times and dates of certain transactions or the amounts left in special accounts. The company has granted her particular files to comapre with her hidden notes on Pivon. She takes her time in looking through the files. After she has studied the documents for a long time, making sure nothing out of the ordinary stands out at her from the collumns of numbers, she expands her search to include the company database for the recent files on general expenditures. She is methodical and detailed in her research, veering toward more obscure finds on Pivon as her time elapses. He proves to be a rather boring case.  
As she reads the obscure news clippings with a detached and dissociative air, she hears her phone go off, displaying an unfamiliar number. With an estranged look, she regards her cell phone. It is 3:36 in the morning. Who dares call her now? She hesitantly returns her phone to its designated space on the table. It vibrates and sounds its high pitched alarm for awhile more, until it silences itself. No voicemail.  
She tentatively returns to her work. Jeremy Pivon graduated Stockholm Business School cum laude in 1985, Jeremy Pivon attended real estate conventions in Soderham in 1998, Jeremy Pivon was a notable donor to the production of his child's school play in 2003…The phone rings again. It's the same number, one she doesn't recognize. This time, the hour is 3:41. She holds out the phone with unsure hands, the glow of the screen shining a light electric green and white on her face, the vibration of the incoming call trembling in her long white fingers. A dull thrum of panic starts in her abdomen. Who could it be, calling at this hour? It was supposed to be a dull, static night, vacant of the operations associated with the lives of others, not this was different, this was an annoying intermitence that threw everything into…doubt…  
She was at a loss for what to do. If it was him, she could answer it, and succumb…to the childish instincts of will, the callous want for instant gratification, like a simple girl would do…or she could be proud, and continue to ignore the calls, continue ignoring the sound until she gets the present fucking epiphany that she may never have this opportunity again…  
Lisbeth then holds the phone in front of her face. It rings once more, and then again, until it finally goes quiet and she exhales the breath she has been holding. The unrecognized number eventually disappears from the screen, and the moment is over. She bites her lip, wondering if it really was him, before putting it out of her mind…  
The hour is 4:45 when the phone rings again. Lisbeth is hunched over more paperwork on Pivon, forty pages into a written document that meticulously listed her findings, and jumps at the sight of the new number. This is starting to get annoying. She wraps up the sentence she was writing, and glares at her mobile. It vibrates indifferently in place. This time she leaves the phone on the table where she is writing and instead stares at it intensely. After four rings, it quiets. She looks around, dazed, thinking that whoever was calling her was indeed urgently needing to speak with her, and that it would be very difficult now to go back to work on the Jeremy Pivon case and the pages of his menial life. She reaches for the ash tray, and gets up to dump the ashes. She sits back at the table. After a minute of uncomfortable silence, she reaches for her mobile and taps her finger on the screen to navigate the screens until she finds the unfamiliar number inside her missed calls. She debates whether to return the call. On the one hand, she could take matters into her own hands, and put a swift end to things by herself. On the other hand, ignoring the problem avoided conflict and allowed her to go on consequently without meaningful interaction with other human beings. She had never minded having conversations with strangers, but she found that in general, isolating herself was the best way to go on living her life, as most people were dull copies of each other, and chatter was a deafening mess compared to shadowy silence.  
She returns to work. She has a few more tasks to complete on the Pivon case before choosing a resting spot. If she is dilligent, she can finish before the sun rises. She takes out a cigarette and considers the records and documents in front of her. She wonders distantly what time she will finally get to sleep, and when the last article of sleep she had was anyway…Time seems to stand still here, like everything else when, on nights like these, she feels everything come to a head…she inhales the cigarette. Blue smoke charges airily through her lungs and fills her senses with hard nicotene, more hard lessons to learn. She is a professional at this, and at this nothing…at the act of being a stranger, looking in…she knows she will always feel like this. Detached, destructive…always on the outside, looking in. She is a stranger in the world, and she always will be…nothing feels permanent, everything seems distant, illogical, fleeting…She looks around at the Pivon paperwork laid out roughly in piles around her. With what little diligence she can produce, she goes back to typing on the Macbook. She makes slow progress. She has added ten pages and has begun the press clippings file when, at 5:10, the phone rings again. This time she has to physically stop herself from throwing the phone at the wall. If this is who I think it is, she thinks. It rings and rings, and after a while it quiets. She takes out another cigarette and stares at the mobile on the table. Someone…someone is making quite the tirade against her. Of course, it could be something important. But her crippling social paranoia would prevent her from finding that out. In reality no one should be calling, consistently, at this hour, because if she was perfectly honest with herself , she didn't know anyone. It could really only be one person, bothering her at this ungodly hour. But it had been several months since she had seen that person, and she is still bitterly enraged at him. He had no right to be calling her at this hour. She checks the battery life left in her computer.  
Abruptly she unplugs the laptop, grabs it and lifts it, collects some some papers, and carries them with her into the bedroom. She splays her things around her on the bed haphazardly and commences typing in the laptop. As she types, she can barely focus on any one thing in particular, but she makes steady progress. It is light out. She has just made enough headway to stop when, suddenly, she hears a sharp tapping at the door.  
"Lisbeth? Lisbeth! Open up, it's Michael Blomkvist!"  
Fuck. It is him.  
She snaps the laptop shut and rises from the bed. If he thinks he is coming though that door…What does he want? She doesn't move. Can she pretend she's not home? Fuck, her Kawasaki is parked out front. What does he want, anyway? How could matters get any worse?  
"Lisbeth, I know you're in there! I just want to talk to you!"  
She debates not answering. He emhad/em been the one calling all night. Now, at 6 AM, just when she was about to call it quits and fall asleep, he was demanding entry into her flat. It had been months since she had seen him, when, after that massive ordeal with the Vanger case, she had spotted him leaving the Millennium offices with Erika Berger. He had had a sexual relationship with Salander, but it wasn't exclusive and Lisbeth had gotten rather badly burned. Rather than to be an adult about the situation, she had regressed and isolated herself from him completely. He must have gotten a new number, to make it through the security blocks she had set in place against him.  
He raps on the door again, louder this time. The sound is enough to wake up her neighbors down the hall, of that she is sure. "Fuck," she cries, and marches toward the door in reluctant acquiescence to his demands.  
She hesitates at the door. "Lisbeth? Lisbeth, I know you're home! I—" and then, a slight, "oh," as he sees her, in her dissheveled grace.  
Then she mutters, as sarcastically as possible, "What do you want?" It is him, looking cautiously cheerful and no worse for the wear. He is carrying a white paper bag and a leather side bag, wearing a blue sweater with suede elbow patches and dark jeans, with brown leather ankle boots. She looks at him longwise for a second before he says, with a slight smile, "Well, can I come in?"  
She gives him a caustic look. "Do I have any other choice?" He smirks fully now, pushing his way past her. "Oh, come on. It won't be that bad." He looks around at her apartment. She stays at the doorway and slams the door shut. "Was it you calling my phone all night? Jesus, I didn't get a wink of sleep! What's wrong with you?"  
He sets the bag on the table and looks at her. "Were you sleeping?"  
"No, but that's not the point!"  
"I'm sorry, Lisbeth." He looks at her pleadingly. "I didn't know how else to get ahold of you!" She stares at him long and hard.  
"You haven't yet said what you want."  
He is busy setting out the contents of the bag on the table, a little away from her piles of paper. He laid out some napkins and a small white cardboard box. "Try some?" He looks over at her innocently.  
She looks at him, and then down at the box. Inside she sees little white pastries, covered in a thick dust of powdered sugar. She is so worn from her night of working, and he's being so…friendly….it's put her in a mood. She doesn't know whether to accept the pastry or continue being cross with him. She is not ready to let him bully her into friendship again, or possibly…She reaches for a pastry wordlessly and looks at him, before sitting down at the table. "So whaddyou want?" she says, her mouth full of raspberry jelly.  
"I have a new job for you. If you want it. I'm researching the deportation policies of Sweden's social services department in relation to corrupt government officials involved in prostitution scandals. I have a number of leads but so far no one is talking. I know how you handled that last job," he leans in, lowering his voice, "and I wanted to know if you could do it again."  
She looks up at him. "Is this what was so important?"  
"I have been trying to contact you!"br / She had his number blocked. To mention this would be taboo, because it meant he had been important enough for her to have cared, and while she never worried about this type of thing in the digital realm, she was curtly aware of the difference in person. "I…didn't want to talk."  
"Lisbeth, why not? I've been pleading to talk to you for weeks, months now! I don't even know why you're upset! I haven't done anything to deserve this treatment, that I know of."  
She feels scandalized. Upon rapid fire analysis of the details of the situation, she realizes that without telling Michael he had been COMPLETELY UNAWARE of her trajectory of reasoning. She feels the whole world buzzing to a stop around her. She swallows the last of the sticky pastry in her mouth and sets the rest of it on a napkin. Looking down at the darkly greying hardwood floor, she says nothing.  
He sits across from her at the table. "Lisbeth, as far as I recall, I have done nothing to make you upset," he begins. After a long time, he continues, "But that doesn't mean I'm not willing to work with you to work it out."  
She is silent. She turns over in her head the specifics of how Michael Blomkvist came to be in her apartment, and of what he must have known to have come here unsolicited like this. "Besides," he goes on, with more lightness in his voice now, "I need you to work for me."  
She is restless now, staring into his blue eyes. "Alright, I'm sorry. I didn't want to talk to you for all this time because I knew something about you, about you and Erika Berger. If you read the report I did on you…Did you read the report?" she pauses, her memory rapidly flashing through scenes of writing the report, handing it to Armansky, meeting Blomkvist in her apartment for the first time, making love to him in the cabin at Hedestad…the nasty explosion that left Martin Vanger dead…the last time she saw Blomkvist…  
"I mean, not…cover to cover…"  
"It says you have a long standing sexual relationship with your co-editor of the magazine. You do have a longstanding sexual relationship with her, don't you?"

Michael pauses for a long time. "Lisbeth. That doesn't mean that I don't -"  
"You know what?" She interrupts. "I don't want to talk about it either. You may or may not have your own active sex life…I don't care about that. The point is, I knew we weren't exclusive." Damn. She's in the middle of explaining this when suddenly she realizes that it is exactly what she doesn't want to express to him, or anyone, at this moment, or any other moment, for that matter. She pauses to think of what to say next. "I saw you leaving Millennium with Erika  
Michael's eyes widen and his mouth falls open, full of blueberry jelly pastry. She watches him closely. He swallows, and then starts, "Lisbeth—"  
"It's alright. I forgive you. I was just acting childish and thought you wouldn't care. Now you're here and need my help…I guess I can assist you. But you need to talk to Dragan—"  
"No. Not this time. This time I will pay you directly, and it has to be off the record. It's a little dangerous. Are you sure you can handle it, Lisbeth?"  
"Whatever it is, I'll be fine. I know a thing or two about how the government handles things, too, legally. hackers have to find out about internet laws all the time. If it's the government you're afraid of."br / "Well, it is. These officials have been deporting prostitutes for years, and I think it's to keep them quiet. Millennium is going to run a huge expose in a few months, written by yours truly, and I need it to be accurate. I have good information otherwise" he continues slyly, "But I need your help to back it up."  
"Well, good luck. I can hack some government official's personal computers for you, and that'll give you most of what you need. Their servers will be more difficult…They're protected. I have to do some research."  
"I'll pay you for your time. I'll pay double Armanksi's rate."Double?"  
"It's highly classified information."  
"Where did you get double?"  
"The Vanger account did well."  
"Still, double?"  
"I have my share, okay, now I'm giving you your share. I need a good assistant, and you're worth it. You know, I couldn't have done it without you last time."  
"I don't know what to say."  
"Will you take the account?"  
"I mean, sure."  
"Okay, great." He pauses, then takes the first bite of a new pastry. With his mouth full, he asks "Do you like the donuts?"  
"Yeah, they're pretty good."  
"I got them from a bakery not too far from here."  
She smirks, then pulls out a cigarette. "And they were open at this hour?"  
He looks stricken. Sheepishly, he stammers, "They were open at 5:30."  
She smiles fully now, laughing lightheartedly at him internally. "Hm. Want any coffee?" She rises before he answers, and walks to the pot. She takes the pot and opens the lid, fills it with warm tap water, and returns to pour the water in the tank of the coffee maker. Then, she grabs the coffee, opens the bag, pours the coffee into a new filter in the machine, and replaces the lid. She returns to her seat. "Why'd you call me so early in the morning? Was it that urgent?"  
"I was up at Millennium doing research until one in the morning. I had purchased a new cell phone to try and reach you earlier that day, but didn't have time to call you until after midnight, and I was too anxious to wait."  
"That explains it."  
"Were you sleeping? I'm sorry if I disturbed you."  
"I wasn't sleeping. I was holding a stakeout."  
The coffee maker buzzes and ticks as the coffee is filetered through to the caraffe. "A stakeout? That's impressive. "  
She doesn't say anything. "On who? Who were you staking out?"  
"Just this guy, for Milton. He's an investment realtor who's embezzling from the company. Botched papers. It's an easy job." She continues, standing to attend to the coffee pot which had just beeped its alarm to signify that the pot is ready. "Went to the location, took some pictures, You know. Same shit, different day."  
"Sounds exciting. I'm glad you're keeping busy." He takes the mug of coffee she hands him (that states emAren't you glad it's not MONDAY/em) and turns to rummage around the cabinets for the sugar. br / "Sorry," she states. "No milk."  
"Oh, that's okay. I drink coffee black."  
"Any sugar?" she asks, tossing some packets on the table.  
He prepares his coffee with two sugar packets. She takes one for herself. He watches her intently as she breaks open the seal of the sugar packet, pours the contents into her cup, and takes a slow first sip of coffee. It is quite strong, the way she takes it when she doesn't sleep, and she revels in its bitter qualities. Michael still watches her when he asks, "And you?" He smirks. "Are you staying out of trouble?"  
"I've been keeping to myself, mostly." It's true; in the months after she had unofficially broke things off with Blomkvist, she had been so overwhelmed with work that she had neglected social interactions with casual acquaintances. She had begun to think that she was disappearing from the world, always favoring the digital realm to the outer mechanics of personal relationships with others. Life had commenced a feeling of complete and utter detachment from everything else in the world around her, and isolating was her favorite method of coping with the stress of living. Michael was something of an outlet for her, a way for her to express her internal self in a way that was not harmful to her. "How are things at the magazine?"  
"Not great, but I can't complain. Erika has accepted a new job with a big newspaper, emSMP/em." Salander's ears perk up. "So we've been very busy keeping up."  
Her blood is rushing slightly. She feels flushed, exhilerated, nervous. "What's going to happen to the magazine?"  
"Oh, it's doing fine. Things are still going on, we're just laying low right how waiting for the next big story."  
Salander takes another big sip of coffee. She is dizzy with lack of sleep, and there is the dull pressure of a headache in her temples. A comfortable silence falls between them. Salander contemplates Michael as he drinks from the cup of coffee. She thinks about his relationship with Erika Berger. Salander had met Erika once, and liked her, but was overwhelmingly jealous of the relationship she had with Michael. With Erika gone at the magazine, Salander would have ample opportunity to rip off Micheal's attention . If she was honest with herself, it was enough for her; she didn't need or expect to be Michael's one and only interest, if that's what it was called. She was happy to have him in her life, as a friend, if nothing else. Michael didn't seem like the type to make commitments, in this department, as she had learned when she had conducted her own research as him as a subject, long ago, before she had even met him.  
The clock above the stove shows that it is almost 7 am. Her eyes meet Michael's. "Do you have anywhere to be?"  
"It's Sunday."  
"Oh."  
There is another long pause before Salander asks, "So when do we start the assignment?"  
"It's really up to you. I've been working on it for a few weeks now, so I really don't need you until you're available."  
"Forward me the details. I need to know the names and occupations of the people in question."  
"Fine, that's fine. I have a ton of research for you to go through. Should we start next week? We can go out to my cabin in Sandhamn."  
"I'll free up some time at work. I can make it."  
"Great. I'll need you for a couple of weeks, unless it turns into anything larger."  
"That's fine."  
"You will need a jacket. Do you know how to get there?"  
"Just give me the address, I will be fine."  
"That'll be in the email, along with everything else." He would have to look it up himself, having made visits to his cabin more infrequent than he would like. He looks around the table at the things she has left out. He grabs a page of accounts that Jeremy Pivon had turned in to Sundstrom Homes four years ago.  
She reaches across the table and grabs it. "That's nothing. Work stuff." She closes the files and stacks them into one heap. Then she drags the heap to the opposite corner of the table.  
Michael is smirking. "What are you going to do today?"  
Lisbeth is at a loss for what to say. "I, uh…was going to work until the afternoon," she lies.  
Michael looks a little disappointed. Before Lisbeth can stammer out another excuse, he declares, "Well, I'd better get going. I have some stuff to catch up on at the magazine." Lisbeth suspects that he is lying. But he is soon on his feet, and striding toward the door. She rises and follows him. He opens the door to the hallway. She leans on the doorjamb. He turns to look at her.  
"Well, it was good seeing you again. I hope you can find me," he says, looking optimistic. She feels dejected. As he turns and leaves, she says  
"I'll see you."


End file.
